Britain’s biggest cities are losing hundreds of millions of pounds a month in spending because of remote working.
Purchases in London, Manchester, Glasgow, Newcastle and Cardiff will fall by a combined £322 million a month across their city centres if office workers continue to spend at least part of the week at home, the Centre for Economics and Business Research has said.
The data is based on spending that was lost during the pandemic on lunches, drinks and stationery, and if office staff move to hybrid working long term, spending some of the week in the office and some of the week at home.
The CEBR said that £11.9 billion of spending had moved out of shops, pubs and food outlets in the five city centres between March last year and May 2021.
The centre is one of the UK’s leading economic consultancies and was founded more than 25 years ago.
Google mobility data shows that the number of people going to places of work on weekdays last month was 34 per cent below pre-crisis levels. About 50 per cent of office workers in Cardiff attended their workplace during the week, while Newcastle recorded a 34 per cent drop in people attending — the lowest and highest shares respectively among the big cities.